LibGuides: Library Resources: How Do I...?: ...Find Reliable Websites?

Can I Use Websites For Research?

Yes - with some cautions.

What are you researching?

The more formal the assignment - for example, a paper rather than homework - the less likely it will be that a website can be used.
Websites are never "scholarly resources." (Online books and journal articles MAY be.)
When in doubt, you should always check with your instructor first.

How reliable is the website?

Anyone can put up any kind of information online: good, bad, accurate, inaccurate, or deliberately false!
Evaluate all information that you find on websites. See the box to the right for more information.

Try the library first - believe it or not, it's EASIER!

Always use the library's print resources and databases FIRST, and look for open web resources as a last resort.
Resources in the library and its databases have already been evaluated and approved by scholars. The work has been done for you!

Where do I find good websites?

Following is list of websites that the academic community has favorably reviewed. We are not responsible for their maintenance or for the quality of any sites to which they may link. Please consult a librarian if in doubt about the authority of any information found on the open web.

Research Websites

Library of Congress: American Memory
AmDocs: Documents for the Study of American History
Features documents related to American history from the 15th century to the present. Contains letters, manuscripts, speeches, constitutions, songs, proclamations, treaties, State of the Union addresses, and other documents. Maintained by George Laughead, Jr., manager of the Kansas Heritage Group.
History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web
A gateway to primary documents, images, audio files, and secondary articles concerning U.S. History. Developed by American Social History Project/Center for Media & Learning, City University of New York, and the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University.
Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930
Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War
A digital archive of thousands of letters, diaries, newspapers, speeches and records from two communities, one Northern and one Southern, during the time of the Civil War. Maintained by the University of Virginia's Virginia Center for Digital History.
Best of History Websites
Gateway to web resources in various fields of history. Maintained by EdTechTeacher.
Discovering American Women's History Online
Provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s. Maintained by Ken Middleton, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University's Walker Library.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.
Women Working, 1800-1930
Provides access to digitized books, pamphlets, manuscripts and images from the collections of Harvard University Libraries and Museums on the topic of women in the U.S. economy from 1800-1930.
The Smithsonian Collections Search Center
Search the records of the Smithsonian Institute
History HUB
History Hub is a crowdsourcing platform sponsored by the National Archives. It is a place to ask questions, share information, work together, and find people based on their experience and interests. Experts from the National Archives as well as other experts, history enthusiasts, and citizen archivists are available to help with your research.
DocsTeach
Access thousands of primary sources — letters, photographs, speeches, posters, maps, videos, and other document types — spanning the course of American history. From the National Archives.

ACRL Women and Gender Studies Section
A link to the website of the Women and Gender Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries which contains bibliographies and other resources related to the field.
Women's Studies/Women's Issues Resource Sites
Gateway to web resources in the field of women's studies. Maintained Joan Korenman at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Discovering American Women's History Online
Provides access to digital collections of primary sources (photos, letters, diaries, artifacts, etc.) that document the history of women in the United States. These diverse collections range from Ancestral Pueblo pottery to interviews with women engineers from the 1970s. Maintained by Ken Middleton, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Middle Tennessee State University's Walker Library.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Women Working, 1800-1930
Provides access to digitized books, pamphlets, manuscripts and images from the collections of Harvard University Libraries and Museums on the topic of women in the U.S. economy from 1800-1930.

Everyday Sociology Blog
A blog exploring sociology's relevance to pop culture, media and everyday life. Material contributed by sociology professors in the academic community.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
Online version of the 1998 AltaMira Press encyclopedia, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. Maintained by Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Child Care & Early Education Research Connections
Provides information about scholarly research, policy briefs, government reports and data on child care and early education.
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.
Pew Research Center
Reports and datasets covering a wide variety of topics, such as social trends, internet and tech, and science

Free Medical Journals Online
Site providing links to freely available online medical journals.
Drug Information Portal
Gateway to selected drug information from the National Library of Medicine and other key government agencies. Maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
Public Library of Science
Gateway to open access journals in the fields of medicine, biology and genetics.
Physical Sciences Resource Center
Gateway to web resources in the physical sciences, including astronomy, chemistry, physics and more. Maintained by the ComPADRE Digital Library.
Library of Congress: Biology, Genetics, Natural History, Zoology
Gateway to web resources in the fields of biology, genetics, natural history and zoology. Maintained by the Library of Congress.
Eric Weisstein's World of Science
Provides links to encyclopedic information in the areas of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, mathematics and physics. Created and maintained by Eric Weisstein at Wolfram Research.
Science.gov
Gateway to scientific web sites as well as a search engine for government science information and research results. Maintained by a consortium of U.S. federal agencies.
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.
NIST Data Gateway
Gateway to online databases in the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and forensic science. Maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Cornelia Connelly Digital Library
Resource for learning more about the life and works of Cornelia Connelly and the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. Developed and maintained by the Holy Child Network of Schools.
Virtual Religion Index
Gateway to finding religion resources online, maintained by the Department of Religion at Rutgers University.
Papal Encyclicals Online
Religious Studies Online Resources
Gateway to web resources in the field of religious studies. Please note that access to some of the journals listed at the bottom of the page may not be available for Rosemont students. Maintained by Kenyon College.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
Online version of the 1998 AltaMira Press encyclopedia, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. Maintained by Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.
British Library
Provides (under the Discover tab) access to digital versions of several rare texts, including works by Chaucer and Shakespeare, the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, and the Codex Sinaiticus.
The ARDA: Association of Religion Data Archives
"The Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) strives to democratize access to the best data on religion." (from website)
CRRA: Catholic Research Resources Alliance
The Catholic Research Resources Portal, or "Catholic Portal," provides global, freely available access to rare, unique and/or uncommon materials in libraries, seminaries, special collections and archives. By electronically bringing together resources in many formats from many collections, the Portal enables easy, effective and global discovery of Catholic research resources.

Classics in the History of Psychology
Full text of books, articles and chapters in the history of psychology as well as links to other relevant sites. Maintained by the Department of Psychology at York University.
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.

Political Advertising Resource Center
Analyzes television advertisements used in local, state, and national political campaigns from 2004 to the present. Includes videos of advertisements as well as text of the scripts. Maintained by the Center for Political Communication and Civic Leadership at the University of Maryland.
Library of Congress: Government Web Resources
Gateway to web resources in the field of politics and political science. Maintained by the Library of Congress.
Pew Research Center
Reports and datasets covering a wide variety of topics, such as social trends, internet and tech, and science
EISIL: Electronic Information System for International Law
A gateway to primary documents, web sites and research guides concerning all aspects of international law. Maintained by the American Society of International Law.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Ethics Updates at the University of San Diego
Philosophy Pathways
Gateway to web resources in the field of philosophy. Maintained by the International Society of Philosophers.
Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
Online version of the 1998 AltaMira Press encyclopedia, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. Maintained by Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Online Resources for Music Scholars
Provides a basis for beginning electronic research on a wide variety of topics in music, including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, composition, and performance practice. It collects links to archival collections, online scores and sound recordings; article indexes, discographies and bibliographies; scholarly societies; musical reference works; and a miscellany of useful websites. Maintained by the Harvard College Library, Harvard University.
Music Web Resources
Gateway to web resources in various fields of music including ethnomusicology, music education, music theory and more. Maintained by the University of Colorado.

Math Forum
Gateway to a variety of resources concerning all areas of mathematics. Maintained by Drexel University.
Wolfram MathWorld
Provides information and definitions of topics in the field of mathematics, including analysis, logic, statistics and probability. Maintained by Wolfram Mathematica.
Eric Weisstein's World of Science
Provides links to encyclopedic information in the areas of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, mathematics and physics. Created and maintained by Eric Weisstein at Wolfram Research.
Science.gov
Gateway to scientific web sites as well as a search engine for government science information and research results. Maintained by a consortium of U.S. federal agencies.
NIST Data Gateway
Gateway to online databases in the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and forensic science. Maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Research and Citation
Contains information on conducting paper research, and citation guides to APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.
UW-Madison Writer's Handbook
Resources for style guides and quoting and paraphrasing sources. Maintained by the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Indiana University Plagiarism Pamphlet
Plagiarism: What it is and how to recognize and avoid it. An online pamphlet provided by the Writing Tutorial Services of Indiana University.
Copyright Advisory Network
Provides access to information and issues concerning copyright, fair use and public domain. Maintained by the American Library Association.
Amherst College: The Writing Center's Recommended Resources
Links to information on writing skills and practices.

Radio Lingua
Provides access to podcasts of programs in Spanish, French, Italian and German. Maintained by the Radio Lingua Network.
Ethnologue: Languages of the World
Information on over 7,000 languages; every known living language.
Library of Congress: Area Studies

Environmental Ethics
CAIT Climate Data Explorer
CAIT is a free and open source for comprehensive and comparable climate and emissions data. Maintained by the World Resources Institute.
Library of Congress: The Environment
Gateway to web resources in the field of earth sciences, including ecology, biodiversity, environmental law and others. Maintained by the Library of Congress.

GreenFILE
This free research database provides scholarly, government and general-interest sources covering the environmental effects of individuals, corporations and governments and what can be done at each level to minimize negative impacts.

Click here for support.

Science.gov
Gateway to scientific web sites as well as a search engine for government science information and research results. Maintained by a consortium of U.S. federal agencies.

Education Web Sites
Gateway to web resources in the field of education, including assessment, policy, theory and research methods. Maintained by American University.
Child Care & Early Education Research Connections
Provides information about scholarly research, policy briefs, government reports and data on child care and early education.
Making of America at Cornell University
Provides access to digitized monographs and journal articles of the nineteenth century in the areas of education, psychology, history, sociology, religion, and science. Maintained by Cornell University Library.

Poetry Archive
Poetry Foundation
Spenser Online
Gateway to Edmund Spenser texts, discussions and links as well as the broader subject of Renaissance English literature. Maintained by the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge.
Institute for Writing and Rhetoric
Access to free resources to help students develop their writing, speaking, research and communication skills. Maintained by Dartmouth College.
African American Women Writers of the 19th Century
Library of Congress: Area Studies
HathiTrust
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
British Library
Provides (under the Discover tab) access to digital versions of several rare texts, including works by Chaucer and Shakespeare, the Gutenberg Bible, the Magna Carta, and the Codex Sinaiticus.
The Walt Whitman Archives
The Walt Whitman Archive is a comprehensive resource about Whitman's life and work, co-directed by Dr. Ed Folsom and Dr. Kenneth M. Price. Whitman has been one of the most influential writers in American history. Among his works are Leaves of Grass and Memoranda During the War, which describes the poet's experiences while nursing Civil War soldiers.
Emily Dickinson Lexicon
Representative Poetry Online
Representative Poetry Online, version 3.0, includes 4,700 English poems by 723 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today.
Voices and Visions
A streaming video series from Annenberg Media, explores the lives and works of 13 of America's most famous modern poets.

Page One Economics
Gateway to economic information at the international, national and regional levels. Maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
BE Online: Business Internet Resources
Gateway to internet resources in the fields of business, accounting, entrepreneurship, marketing and finance. Maintained by the Library of Congress.
Pew Research Center
Reports and datasets covering a wide variety of topics, such as social trends, internet and tech, and science
Women Working, 1800-1930
Provides access to digitized books, pamphlets, manuscripts and images from the collections of Harvard University Libraries and Museums on the topic of women in the U.S. economy from 1800-1930.
EH.net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History
A searchable encyclopedia of topics in economic and business history. Written and edited by a wide variety of experts in the academic community.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
Data.gov: Business
Provides access to data from various industries such as banking, insurance, securities, mortgage finance and more. Maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration.

Death Penalty Information Center
Gateway to articles, web sites and other resources concerning all aspects of capital punishment. Maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit organization.
Legal Information Institute
Provides access to laws, constitutions, court opinions and cases. Maintained by Cornell Law School.
National Criminal Justice Reference Service
Gateway to summaries and article citations of more than 200,000 justice and substance abuse resources. Maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Library of Congress: Legal Research Guides
Access to research guides on the fields of law, international law, administrative law, judicial decisions and more. Maintained by the Library of Congress Law Library.
EISIL: Electronic Information System for International Law
A gateway to primary documents, web sites and research guides concerning all aspects of international law. Maintained by the American Society of International Law.
NIST Data Gateway
Gateway to online databases in the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics and forensic science. Maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

SBA.gov
A comprehensive gateway to small business resources and documents. Managed by the U.S. Small Business Administration.
BELL: Business Ethics Links Library
BELL is a comprehensive starting point for research in corporate ethics and social responsibility. The database provides access to codes of ethics for U.S. companies and trade and professional associations, ethics sites at college and university business programs, industry information resources, and company promotion of social responsibility covering such topics as arts assistance, environmental clean up, charitable giving and community programming.
BE Online: Business Internet Resources
Gateway to internet resources in the fields of business, accounting, entrepreneurship, marketing and finance. Maintained by the Library of Congress.
EH.net Encyclopedia of Economic and Business History
A searchable encyclopedia of topics in economic and business history. Written and edited by a wide variety of experts in the academic community.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics.
Data.gov: Business
Provides access to data from various industries such as banking, insurance, securities, mortgage finance and more. Maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration.

Artcyclopedia
Artcyclopedia is a searchable guide directing users to different sites around the web containing images and information about various works of art, artists, and movements. Artcyclopedia has indexed 2,900 art sites and listed 9,000 artists.
Getty Research Portal
Digitized copies of art history texts, rare books and other special collections
ArtCrimes
Access to a gallery of graffiti art in the US, Europe and cities around the world. Maintained by independent photographers and graffiti enthusiasts Susan Farrell and Brett Webb.
Art Through Time
From the Annenberg Foundation, examine overarching themes that connect art and artists from different cultures and different periods of time
Artstor Public Collections
Smithsonian Collections
Timeline of Art History
A chronological, geographical, and thematic exploration of the history of art from around the world. Created and maintained by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Online Books Page
The Online Books Page is an index of over 2 million e-text books available on the Internet. It is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks, most of which are in the public domain.
Directory of Open Access Journals
Searchable collection of 3500 scholarly and scientific open access journals, maintained by Lund University Libraries. NOTE: Many titles in this collection are not in English. (What is Open Access?)
Free Medical Journals Online
Site providing links to freely available online medical journals.
Public Library of Science
Gateway to open access journals in the fields of medicine, biology and genetics.
PubMed Central (PMC)
A free, full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journals maintained by the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
Access to millions of open-access electronic books and images made available by the thousands of participating libraries, museums and archives in the United States. Maintained by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

How Do I Tell A Good Website From A Bad One?

There are a number of online tutorials available on evaluating websites:

Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask
(UC Berkeley Library)
Evaluating Web Sites
(University of Maryland Libraries)
Evaluating Internet Information
(Virginia Tech University Libraries)

I Found A Good Website; How Do I Cite It?

Documenting Electronic Sources
(Purdue University Online Writing Lab)

Chicago Manual of Style Online
Online version of The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition. Includes, in addition to the searchable manual, a question and answer section and tools for manuscript preparation.

Click here for support.

Purdue Online Writing Lab: Research and Citation
Contains information on conducting paper research, and citation guides to APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.

To Google Or Not To Google?

There's a time and place for everything! Google is great for casual web searching, but not for academic research.
Google's algorithms are set to show you certain types of information first, often for commercial reasons. Helpful when you're shopping, but not when you're researching!
There may be times when you can use Google to search for open web resources for an assignment, but try to use it only as a last resort, and with caution.

What About Wikipedia?

Wikipedia itself should never be used as a source in an assignment.
...BUT in most Wikipedia articles, you can find lists of Sources and External Links which may contain resources you can use.
Browsing Wikipedia can also give you a good sense of the breadth and depth of any given topic: whether there's enough information on which to base an entire research project.
Of course, traditional encyclopedias have bibliographies too - and you know you can trust their information! Why not try searching Credo Reference for your topic instead?